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Monday, October 30, 2017

When you come out a few hours later, I ask, “What do you
think of that room?”

You can reflect on how it made you feel, if you were
comfortable, if the furniture was actually effective doing what it was supposed
to, if you thought the décor worked. You can tell me, objectively, how it made
you feel in hindsight.

But let’s say I asked you to go into a room and tell me
what you thought of it as you stood there. Would your answer be the same?

People say that writers are biased against our own
work—and we are. But no matter who you get to read it, whenever a person sits
down and attempt to analyze the “quality” of a book, we’re more likely to have
a self-awareness, a sort of “quantum” effect in which just by trying to measure
how we feel about it, it alters how we feel about it. By scrutinizing our
emotions, those emotions change. How can we know how enjoyable it is when we can’t
sit back and just let ourselves enjoy it? How can we know if a reader is
immersed if we’re deliberately trying to analyze it as a work of fiction rather
than reality?

You’ll hear authors talk about word count and draft numbers and other such
things, seeming to focus on all of the wrong issues. Does it really matter how
long your book is if it has good flow, timing, and a satisfying ending? Why
should you cut half your words out just to make it fit into a certain
“standard?” Shouldn’t we revise the number of times needed, not randomly tell
ourselves “five?”

And yes, I think that’s true. Perfection by numbers
versus results can be a problematic mentality, detrimental in creating real
beauty. We see it everywhere, and usually to poor ends. Anorexia is such a
numbers game—How many calories did I eat? How many did I burn? How long did I
work out for? How many pounds do I weigh? What’s my body fat percentage?—and
supersede what they actually see in the mirror. We can definitely do this with
our writing (though the ramifications are obviously not so severe), and it’s
important to try and consider what is actually in front of you before
arbitrarily attempting to remove adverbs or forcing yourself to do three more
drafts and end up overworking it.

However, while the idea that arbitrary guidelines
shouldn’t replace judgment is valid, there is some reason
why people tend to follow these rules.

When my current manuscript was finished at 180,000 words,
I knew that if I wanted to go the traditionally published route, I would have
to start cutting. Even in science-fiction where the standard sizes are bigger
than most genres, 120,000 words is too big. It was literally twice the size of an average length book. However, when chatting about it, many
people criticized or just questioned my decision to cut, suggesting it wasn’t
necessary. But not only did I know that size matters in the publishing world
(it directly ties into costs and marketability), I also believed that I could cut a lot from it. There were
story lines that never tied back in, there were boring or long winded scenes,
and I believed that I could definitely tighten the plotline.

Having the goal of 60,000 words made the whole process
easier.

I told myself that I would stop cutting if I thought it
was hurting the story, but I would push myself to keep it up until I got closer
to my goal amount. This decision not only took out a lot of heartache and
helped me be less overwhelmed, but it also let me understand what I cared about
when it came to my writing. It also gave me two contradicting goals—my pride
that everything is important all of the
time, and my laziness in I just want
this done!—which allowed for me to be less bias when it came to making a
decision.

By having this alternative focus, I wasn’t sitting there staring
at it and trying to decide how I felt about it, but rather paying enough
attention to what I could cut that I allowed myself to feel the other elements
of the story better. When it came to ambiance, character development, and
bigger picture aspects, because I wasn’t so intent on understanding them, I was much more cued into what it
actually felt as a reader who wasn’t trying to improve the book. When I wasn’t
absorbed in trying to improve Element A, Element A was more able to be itself.

It also proved to me just how little I cared about some
of the choices I otherwise would have found important. The numerical goal
forced me to cut things I was uncertain about which I probably would have left.
Having slashed so many sentences, I found myself seeing the bigger picture
rather than being precious about each individual line. There were some phrases
that I much preferred shortened. There were also those that I thought were much
worse and changed back. Most of the time, I didn’t really feel powerfully one
way or another; I liked it short, I liked it long. It didn't affect it in the short term, but the overall ambiance. One short sentence is not a big deal. Many changes everything.

I learned that purple prose isn’t about length, and it
may come from a sentence that is too to the point and could stand a little more
explanation. In some cases, especially prepositional phrases, the excess words
aren’t “necessary,” but sound bizarre without them, like “He thought about it,”
versus, “He thought.”

But I came to like “He thought,” much better too. In some
ways the cutting made my writing more noticeable and unique—good or bad. This
process of forcing myself to make a change for the pure sake of making a change
made me analyze why I chose to do what I did, and if I really considered all of
the options or just did the first thing that came to mind and left it at that.

Because your pride and laziness will always be devout
attendees of your decisions, making up some sort of guideline that turns them
on each other can help you determine whether or not you really are making the
best possible selection. When you have a huge scene that you would like to cut
because it’s boring and you need the word count, but you know you can’t just
delete it (without a rewrite) because it would change the whole plot, you know
that you’re not lying to yourself about it being important.

It’s not necessary to make up random rules for yourself,
and there’s a lot of merit in trying to discern your judgment organically. But
keep in mind that having random guidelines, instead of restricting you, might
actually be a lot more freeing.

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Friday, October 27, 2017

Shame is a
powerful tool, one I personally believe is a last resort. Sometimes shame truly
is the best means to get someone to change their behavior, but it can be cruel,
manipulative, and misdirected if used without restriction.

Truth is, you
can shame someone pretty easily even if they logically realize they didn’t do
anything wrong.

However, there
is a philosophy about shame versus blame personality types suggesting that some
personalities have the tendency to “shame” themselves while others have the tendency
to “blame” others.

You’ve
experienced it before, the person who plays the victim, who every time
something goes wrong for them they practice extreme mental gymnastics in how
everyone is to blame but themselves. And you’ve possibly been aware of someone
who tends to assume everything is their fault, who is too hard on themselves,
from the guy who panics over picking up his coworkers’ slack to the woman who
claims being struck only happened because she talked back. Some people take
responsibility for everything.

In all
likelihood, you’ve been both at some point in your life. You’ve probably
foolishly allowed someone to walk all over you, or worked tirelessly to find external solutions to problems caused by your own behavior. Most people fall
somewhere in a spectrum and fluctuate back and forth. But overall, you probably
have a tendency to err on one side or the other.

This isn’t a bad
thing either. Life is full of gray areas and rarely is “who’s at fault” cut in
stone. Trying to figure out both how others screwed us as well as how we messed
up is the foundation of improvement and preventing something from happening
again. It’s how you learn.

But what I find
is, while many people criticize those who play the victim and feel it’s better
to blame yourself, leaning too much in either direction is unhealthy and
useless. An individual needs to, at least momentarily, reassess when something goes wrong to see if she can accurately decide what to do differently when it happens again.

I advise people
that constructive criticism should be fun. It’s probably not going to be your
first time around, and just because one meeting wasn’t that morale boosting, it doesn’t
mean that it wasn’t useful. Overall, you should be striving to be inspired and
high energy after discussing your work, and if you’re constantly leaving upset
and distraught—shamed even—something needs to change.

Most advisors
tend to blame the author. I think this is a pendulum issue; because the vast
majority of new writers pass fault to those around them—"You didn’t understand
it," "You’re just jealous," "You’re not representative of everyone," "You’re a
jerk"—most people would assume that if you’re not having a good time, it’s
because you’re an egomaniac.

But I find that the people first to accuse someone of defensiveness were pretty sensitive themselves. He who insists to ignore everyone else and just listen to him is going to be the one who lectures you on not taking others' opinions (his) well enough.

Despite the horror stories I like to tell here, most criticism
sessions go well and the people who I work with leave feeling energetic and inspired. The drama occurs when dealing with specific people. In about half the cases, I
would say it’s more of an issue of different philosophies and tastes. Writers
who like simplicity, are more literal minded, and I don’t get along intellectually. We can be pleasant of
course, but their foundation of truth differs drastically from mine and it
makes it hard to understand each other. If both of us try to respect the
other’s viewpoint, this doesn’t matter; we can effectively talk things over. The issue arises when one of us is
having a bad day, doesn’t like the way we’ve been spoken to, or allows for
catharsis to eclipse logic, and the other responds with hostility.

Which is a fancy
way of saying, in most cases, both of us are at fault. Or, another
interpretation is, neither of us; sometimes you just aren’t the best fit for
each other, sometimes you unintentionally say something that means something
different to the listener than it meant for you.

Yet sometimes
you are very much the cause of the issue. They’re trying hard to help you and you’re
allowing your emotions to boil over. But, just as frequently, they’re at fault.
They put no effort into respecting you or your opinion, demand for obedience
with no actual authority, and are needlessly antagonistic solely because they
think they can get away with it.

Which brings me
to my point: people like that need to be treated differently than people who
are trying in order to make a successful conversation.

If you’re not
enjoying yourself in your critique sessions, the first step is to consider what
you can change.

You can change
how you react to things, certainly.

You can change
how you approach things too.

But you can also
change your environment, choose not to surround yourself with certain types of
people.

In some
situations, the best solution is to disengage and go about your way. It truly
isn’t that you need to change yourself, but you need to find a place that fits
you, your tastes, and your personality better.

However you can
also run away from things. If the problem is actually in your attitude, you’re likely to find changing locations just transfers the
problem. It’s also sometimes easier and more effective to try to fix something instead
of constantly just attempting to replace it or start over. Most importantly,
finding out what is really wrong is difficult when you keep starting from
scratch rather than tweaking things here or there.

Some people insist
that when you don’t like criticism you should look inward because it’s probably
your fault, but I find that to be dangerous. I know too many kind-hearted
people (not me) who were unfairly torn to shreds in a critique because they were
dealing with assholes and amateurs. For these people who tend to blame
themselves initially, being told that these attacks are their doing is counterproductive. They've already thought about why it happened to them, what they could have done differently, and someone else confirming their fears that they're just "too egotistical" to handle awful critiques exacerbates their lack of assertiveness. It’s far more productive to put shame and blame aside completely and look purely analytically for where things went wrong and what you have control over, regardless of who was "at fault."

So if you don’t
like getting criticized, evaluate the situation accordingly. You’re not a jerk,
they’re not a jerk, things just happened.

When things go
wrong, say to yourself…

I made a
decision based on the information I had at the time. I had my reasons.

Then ask
yourself…

What were those
reasons?

Hindsight is
20-20. Sometimes things make a lot more sense after the moment has passed.
Objectively determining what went wrong without seeking who’s to blame (including
yourself) will give you more experience to make an informed decision next time
around.

If you’re not
use to self-reflecting, this can be difficult to remember what exactly caused
you to get upset and/or why. You need to practice putting yourself in others’
shoes before you’re good at it, while also remembering not to get so
obsessed with other people’s thoughts that you stop respecting your own. It’s
okay to say, “I don’t understand where he was coming from,” and move on if you
can’t figure it out.

It’s not a good
thing to think everything is your fault all of the time. That can lead to
unreasonable insecurity as well as make you a target for jackasses and
manipulation. While the believe that blaming everyone else for your problems
won’t solve anything either, it’s important to realize that you can’t control
everything.

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Monday, October 23, 2017

One of the more
common factors in two-dimensional dialogue is when the character doesn’t have a
lot of opinions. In most cases, making strong, active decisions about what the
character thinks of things tends to be more interesting. It’s not just a cup of
coffee, he gets only the best beans, and people who add cream are monsters!

Sometimes people
want to be more realistic: He’s just ordering a cup of coffee to wake up.

Which is a valid,
though restrictive, choice, but even if his opinion isn’t a big one doesn’t
mean he isn’t experiencing subtle little judgments throughout the day. Everyone
has at least fleeting opinions on most things in their life, and though he
has “no problem” with Starbucks, if two coffee shops are standing right next to
each other, equal distance away, he’s going to either choose Starbucks or
intentionally not, and he’s going to have a reason, even if he can’t verbalize
it. Likes the vibe of Ma and Pa shops,
he shrugs.

When your
character is doing a perfunctory daily activity with a person he doesn’t know,
that interaction made him feel something. Is it a chore? Does he like talking
to people? Is he made uncomfortable by strangers? If you decide it is so common
that he’s removed from the situation (not mentally present in the room) that’s
a reasonable choice too, but it is a strong one that needs to read in his
character.

This applies to
everything. An “absence of style” is a style, not the default, not the
norm that will work for everyone. An absence of opinions is a distinctive
personality trait. A non-existing prior relationship will highly alter the interaction.
Humanity is created by complexity, and absence of something will not go
unnoticed.

Most decent
writing needs to make stronger choices in order to achieve that intangible mojo
of great works, so if you’re going to defend passivity, do so with vigor and
creativity. Your character is not just not something. He is REALLY not
something.

2) Subjectivity is a real
thing, and it’s a pain in your ass.

The word
subjectivity is thrown out there as sort of an excuse to not listen to other
people. “Writing’s subjective. Leave it as is.”

It’s
actually more of a problem than most authors realize when we first start. Most
people tend to assume their tastes are universal, and it can be an obstacle. At
one point, I struggled with drastically conflicting opinions from a myriad of
readers. When I tried to dig deeper for their perspective, my critique
partners thought I was saying they were wrong and shut down or got angry when I
asked questions like, “Do you mean…”

Because most
people don’t think you’ve gotten other feedback, and if you had, those critique
partners would agree, right?

The more you
write, the more you’ll find that subjectivity is real. People simply don’t have the same tastes, goals, pet peeves, or life
experiences and so your stories will affect them differently.

Unfortunately,
this is a pain more than a blessing if you want to improve because the first
step becomes defining what you think good writing is and realizing that there’s
others who vehemently disagree. It’s hard to tell if you’ve taken a wrong step
in the right direction or need to change your goal completely.

3) Have fun with form while worrying about subtext.

Contrary to
popular opinion, I say it’s great to play around with form. Use big words, long
sentences, passive-sentences, exclamation points, short and choppy, weird
descriptions and anything that you want to convey a visual. Just be honest if it
actually worked or not and make sure that you’re also experimenting with the
opposite. Keep in mind what is supposed to happen in each scene and use your
form as a diverse palate tool to achieve different effects. Sometimes short is
better. Sometimes long. Use both, figure out when.

However, playing
with style is more for fun and getting out of your box than actual improvement.
Style falls strictly into the subjective realm, and so even if you do learn how
to write non-invasively, it doesn’t actually mean you’re writing better. It takes a lot of skill to be
sure, however if you have simple, ignorable words it doesn’t matter if there’s
nothing behind them. Some people honestly prefer Shakespeare to Hemingway, yetlovers of both would claim it’s because of the unspoken humanity in their work.

Most mediocre
writing (or even pretty good writing) struggles in its depth. Whether it’s the
poor dialogue or narration, flat characters, uninteresting plot, unengaging
description, I’d say the issue isn’t really the word choice, rather
directly in the narrative: What is this actually saying?

A lot of times,
the subtext in poor fiction is meta: The writer wants me to think…

This dialogue
moves the plot forward, yet the characters lack chemistry. I have no idea what
they’re feeling at the moment. There’s no sense of life other than to deliver
the necessary information.

The narration
clearly and concisely shows me images, but it’s spoon feeding
me everything I need to know. All information is laid out clean and simply.
“Unnecessary” details are left out, and it becomes a clinical summation of
events.

If you want to
write better, find questions about the world that you didn’t even think to ask.
Answer them and use that information to imagine a fuller, more complex
situation, which will integrate itself into the writing without you forcing it.

4) Experiment, take risks,
and remember it’s darkest before dawn.

You can’t make
an omelet without breaking a few eggs. You can’t find out what you’re missing
if you refuse to change what you have.

You do not have to constantly be a good writer, especially if no one’s reading your work. When you
first start, you’re often relearning how to talk. You no longer have things you
depended on before (like body language). Meanwhile, you have gained some tools you’ve
never had (like time to choose your words carefully.) It’s a totally different
culture, fiction, with alternative expectations and norms. Just test things
out. Make decisions and if they’re wrong, learn from them; you’ll be
surprised to find out the vast world of options you have at your disposal. Most
decisions work in the right context.

You will learn far more from messing up and making
mistakes than you ever will from
sticking to only what is said to work, and once you understand the choices at
your disposal, you will best know when to use them.

5) Confidence comes from
either self-awareness or delusion. Only one of those can be learned.

Writing is a lot
more fun when you have confidence. Pretty much everything is, in fact. Getting
to that point takes most people a long time, and some never get there. I
believe, however, that you can actively work to be more confident and enjoy
your writing more, even if you’re not that good at it. Which will, in turn,
make you better at it.

How?

I didn’t gain
confidence because I realized I had my shit together. On the contrary; the more
you learn, the more you realize you don’t know. I feel confident in my writing
because I feel confident in my self-awareness. I know the kinds of mistakes I
tend to make. I know what my strengths are. I know my weaknesses. And while
I’ll still learn something new every day, for the most part, I’m never really
taken back in shock by someone’s opinion.

That awareness
means that I’m not nervous when I give people my writing. That when they tell
me something isn’t up to their standards, I typically know what they mean, and
if I don’t, I’m confident that it’s because I’m missing something—not that my
ego is fighting it.

Because I’m
aware of what that feels like when it is.

Delusional
people are confident too, and there’s something to be said for it. Some of the
most creative individuals are those with their heads up their asses.

Unfortunately, you can’t
force yourself to be a delusional egomaniac. You can, however, figure out what
your insecurities are, what your talents are, and have opinions about your
work.

6) Your opinions matter. So
do other people’s. Just not as much.

How can I say
that?

Okay. Here’s the
thing: Egomaniacs are a pain in the ass and can sabotage themselves right along
with our teammates pretty consistently. Listening will enable you to improve
yourself far faster than being stubborn, and most of the breakthroughs you’ll
have will be something that people have been telling you all your life.

I know. I am
that egomaniac.

I’m not
worried about those types of people. I care about their success as much as
anyone else’s—it’s in my personality, strangely enough. I truly do want to
solve everyone’s problems and for everyone to be happy.

BUT! Egomaniacs
usually do fine. They tend to get a reality check after some point, someone
finally tearing them a new one. Or two. Or three. Or sixteen. Their
hard-headedness made them impervious to the jackasses who try to tear others
down (sometimes being those jackasses, of course.) If they do quit, the dream
usually died in its sleep, abandoned to other interests. I rarely have a moment
of seeing a I’m The Real Writer Here have a fall to Earth where he realizes
he’s “a failure and will never succeed.”

That is far, far
more likely to happen to those who are kind. Those who believe in solidarity.
Those who care about the opinions of others. They are the ones who are likely
to get beaten, chewed up, and spit out. That’s who I’m most concerned for.

It’s your book.
We don’t need just another good one, we have plenty. We need the one that
encompasses your unique perspective and tastes. You just need to figure out
what that is.

Other people are
invaluable to helping you get there. It’s pretty much impossible, and not
really beneficial, to solve your complaints without having another brain to
puzzle it out.

Despite that, you’re still
trying to get to where you want to
be. No one else gets to decide it for you. You might end up compromising,
deciding ‘where you want’ to be is a published author, so you do something
you’re not fond of to make your editor happy. That’s a valid choice, but it’s
still yours. You always have control. (Unless you’ve signed a stupid contract.
Always know what you’re signing.) You get to order your priorities, find
solutions to problems, and even define if something actually is a problem in
the first place.

Find critique
partners and collaborators that respect your opinions. Trust your instincts. Be
a respectful team player, utilize the information given to you, however, make sure
to stand up for yourself and stay strong for the things you actually care
about. Don’t ever shy away from speaking your mind because you don’t think
you’re “worthy enough.”

Because you’ll
just be giving more room to us assholes who unreasonably think we are.

7) It’s supposed to be fun.

Criticism.
Writing. Editing. These are very inspiring and enjoyable parts of life.

What world am I
living in, you say?

Alright. So
admittedly, it’s ridiculous to expect that it will be all sunshine and roses.
Or even often sunshine and roses. In fact, sunshine and roses are pretty
boring, so I’d be a little alarmed if an author described his process like
that. Writing is painful and boring and frustrating. There’s a lot of anger and
uncertainty involved. I write every day and a lot of times I’m itching to quit.

My point is
though that it doesn’t have to be that way. If you’re never having fun, there’s
something wrong. You can fix it, you just got to think how.

It might be your
attitude. It might be the way you go about things. It might be the people who
you surround yourself with. Make little changes like where you work, the medium
you work on, what you’re writing, who you’re discussing it with. Maybe you
should outline. Maybe you should throw it out. Maybe you need to write on a
different subject.

I can’t say why
you’re not enjoying it, just that you shouldn’t give up and assume that’s the
way it has to be.

8) Writing rules are amazing
tools based on insight from our forefathers.

That doesn’t
mean they’re always a good thing.

As I say, if I
strictly adhered to writing rules I wouldn’t like my writing. If I strictly
refused to follow them, I wouldn’t like my writing as much.

Writing rules
are amazing problem solvers. As a foundation for a good book? Not so much. Not
a single person in the world claims a masterpiece follows all the rules. It
can’t, for one thing, some of them in existence specifically to contradict
others.

It’s hard not to
balk at writing rules when they are spewed with vitriol by frustrated authors.
It’s hard to follow them even when they’re politely discussed restrictions. However, they are useful, and while I highly, highly recommend not thinking following
the rules will automatically get you
where you want to be, they are still tools it’s self-sabotaging to
ignore.

9) If you don’t care about
something, that’s the time to pander to your audience.

I worked on a
film produced, directed, written, and starred in by the same guy. It was low
budget, an indie, and he got a volunteer camera guy who was learning about film
from the local community college.

The director was
not a man who took advice very well, and he did not care one iota about the
camera angles. The cameraman attempted to give some opinions and the director
refused to hear it.

One of the worst
parts of the film is the long, distant shots. He would set up the camera and
then refuse to move it throughout the entire location.

This is exactly
the sort of area in which he should have paid more attention to.

One of the most
infuriating critiques is when someone claims not to care about a big,
problematic aspect and refuses to adhere to his audience’s expectations. I see
this most commonly with writers who insist on having typos and other errors all
throughout their books because, “If it’s good, it shouldn’t matter.”

Of course, it’s
pretty infuriating to get it in reverse. A couple of times I’ve had someone say
to me, “You need to change this one word,” and I didn’t agree, to which I was
told, “It’s just one word!”

Then let it go.
If it changes it for the better, you can’t claim it doesn’t change it.

The point is,
pick your battles. I’m not saying to obey every inane request you get, but if
you hear that an audience typically really doesn’t respond well to something
and you’re thinking, “They shouldn’t care about that!” it’s probably precisely
the thing that will make you more trustworthy than your counterparts.

If you DO care,
of course, and disagree, that’s a different matter.

10) Be aware of what other
people are doing.

They say you
can’t be a writer if you don’t read. I say that reading makes everything a
thousand times easier, and you are a real disadvantage if you don’t. But do you
need to? That’s for your own
assessment.

Even if you
decide that you don’t read, or that you don’t read certain things to avoid
being too influenced by them, or even if you say, “I don’t care what anyone
else is doing, I’m going to do what I want!” you should still have some sort of
understanding about the conventions, otherwise your techniques might not
achieve the same effect they do for you.

I personally
believe the best way to learn the rules is by practicing breaking them. When it comes to “the rules” sometimes people just want you to be aware of what
is the current standard when you’re thinking about the effectiveness of an
alternative option.

So yeah, even if
you’re going to write a book that is grammatically incorrect, play around with
commas, and publish a book without a genre, you should still make sure you’re
informed about what you’re being compared to.

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Friday, October 20, 2017

I have a
wealth of short story ideas so instead of leaving them dormant in a folder on
my computer, I want to start publishing them on kindle.

I'll group 3
or 4 of them together, Use public domain images for the cover, start a website
and offer up some stories for free so if people like them they can read more of
my work for just 2.99 a month.

My friends
also have some ideas so I can work with them and we can create new interesting
stories together.

I love old
pulp novels and serials and really want to recreate that with my work.

I have a ton
of ideas, and I even have a few serial ideas so I can carry them through issues
to, hopefully, keep people coming back. If this becomes profitable I may even
start buying stories from people to put in the magazine.

I know I'm
just an amateur but I've written 2 novellas, I've tried writing full length
novels but I just can't get to that 60k word count so I think cutting my teeth
on short stories would be a much better fit for me.

Is there
anyone else doing something like this?

How much
would you pay for one issue a month? The minimum is going to be 2.99 because of
amazons royalty structure

What are
some good ways to promote my magazine and get my name out there?

What would
entice you to click BUY?

There’s a
lot of stuff here, so let’s go in order:

I have a ton
of ideas… but I just can't get to that 60k word count.

Ain’t it the truth?

A couple of years ago a blogger I love decided to
do National Novel Writing Month, but instead of an actual novel, he wanted to
do short stories. He failed pretty quickly. The next year, I decided to do the
same (unrelated), trying to buff up my Stories
of the Wyrd portfolio. I failed pretty quickly, having to speed out a the
first 50K of a novel in two weeks.

Writing short stories seems like it would be
easier than a novel, however, resetting all of the time can actually make it
harder to use the momentum in your favor.

And how many times have we heard aspiring authors
say, “I have a ton of ideas, if I could only write them down?”

After I started Stories of the Wyrd in 2014, I began to find it incredibly
difficult to get out a story a month. For reference, the year prior I had
written a 180,000 word novel in five months, the first 60,000 just that
November alone. I haven’t be as prolific as I once was for various reasons, but
writing a 2,500 word short story every four weeks can be surprisingly
difficult. That’s not to mention quality. Today I still struggle with having
the stories represent what I want Stories
of the Wyrd to be. I have a reliable editor, but she can only do so much
based on what I get her. Finding beta-readers can be a stressor in itself.
Sure, you might find that a monthly deadline helps push you forward, but it’s
pretty important to be dependable if you want to be taken seriously. You can’t
be skipping deadlines due to writer’s block if you want to make a business.

Is there
anyone else doing something like this?

There is always
someone else doing something like this. In fact, whenever you come up with
a ground breaking idea, it’s useful to ask yourself why don’t you see anyone else doing something like this: Either you
aren’t informed about your competition/audience (as in, they are, you’re just
naïve), or people have tried and failed. It is incredibly unlikely—I’d even say
impossible—that no one has come up
with something similar.

It doesn’t mean you can’t make it work, but it’s
useful to understand why it hasn’t been successful yet, as well as be aware if
other people are doing it and how they’re making it happen.

How much
would you pay for one issue a month? The minimum is going to be 2.99 because of
amazons royalty structure

Well, then I’m already priced out.

Market research, my friend. Many self-publishers
ask the internet what cost their books should be and are often disappointed in
the answers. I know. Your book is different than those “hacks churned out in a
week!” but maybe you should just sit back and really make sure you know what your
competition actually looks like. Why would I buy your self-published book for nearly
twice the cost I could of a successful, vetted novel?

I can get an anthology of 20 self-published short
stories for a buck. I can get an anthology of 20 award winning short stories
for seven bucks. You’re offering me a 4 stories:3 dollars ratio, which becomes
fifteen dollars for every twenty shorts. Depending on how long it is… maybe,
but from a man who admits he can’t focus on getting 60K out there easily, I
doubt the four stories would equal the nearly 300 pages of the 16 award-winning
sci-fi short stories I just saw being sold for the exact same price.

Just shop around. Treat yourself as one of the
masses, and be competitive. Truth is, there’s no way in hell that I would buy
four electronic short stories from an unknown self-publisher for three bucks
unless I somehow know it’s absolutely fantastic.

Which brings us to the problem of this whole
suggestion.

While as a pet project, it could be fun and
worthwhile, as a business he intends to make profitable, he’s asking the wrong
questions.

What would
entice you to click BUY?

An amazing pitch with an inspiring cover by a
known author at a competitive price of course!

This sort of route (self-publishing) is best
chosen for those who want to be creative and in control, not as a means to cut
corners. An anthology of short stories is not
easier to write than a novel. Hooking readers is not easier than hooking potential agents and publishing houses. If
making a successful magazine could be as easy as blitzing out a few short
stories every month, grabbing internet images for covers, and charging three
bucks a pop, why isn’t everyone doing it?

I’m an advocate for the nonconventional route.
Having vision and dedication will get you miles along a wide variety of paths.
Most people’s success came from unexpected places. But working outside the
system is appealing to a lot of people, so don’t assume that you have to stop
being competitive just because the gatekeepers aren’t as obvious.

Good ideas are important, but they’re not the only
thing to consider. Execution, showmanship, professionalism, and marketing all
play into how well a book sells. You can’t just be slapping things up online
and expect them to automatically do better than those who have put their blood,
sweat, and tears into it.

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Monday, October 16, 2017

In my short stint trying online dating, I met a
guy with a cute dog and agreed to meet up with him. The problem with these
sites is that the vast majority of men are not photogenic, almost always
looking better in real-life than their photos. A man’s attractiveness has to do
with how he moves, what makes him smile, his energy, the light behind his eyes
when he’s thinking, none of which is conveyed in an online block of text or a two-dimensional photo of him in his bathroom.

So, I wasn’t actually too enthused to meet him in
the first place, but I wouldn’t have agreed if I hadn’t had any optimism.

But then he made it hard.

He argued with my suggestions of locations without
offering up any alternatives, he refused to give me concrete answers to direct
questions, and when I said, “Okay, look. Just tell me where you want to meet
and when, and I’ll be there,” he just said, “lol. Why don’t you give me your
number and we’ll figure it out later in the week?”

Then he started texting me, asking inane questions
he wasn’t interested in and giving perfunctory and dull ones to mine.

“What do you do for a living?”

“I’m an architect.”

…

I don't think you understand what we're doing here.

He was dismissive of my comments and attempt at
jokes, and while not an awful person, it was almost as if instead of thinking
how to make the conversation flow and my life easier, he was doing the exact
opposite. How can I make this a thousand times harder?

My ex had done this to me. There was no solution
to his problems, no compromising, no making him happy. He just would demand you’d
take the lead so he could criticize your decisions. It was an act of
insecurity, I know, and I don't think he meant anything malicious by it. In terms of this
new Romeo, his stubbornness resulted with me engaging with the guy as little as
possible, to stop putting in effort myself, and when he finally asked me if I
wanted to meet up again, I diplomatically informed him that we just don’t seem
to click. He took it fairly well, at least. Love lost...

While interviewing authors, most of them don’t intentionally make my life harder. When
they do things like sending me back the answers without the questions,
formatting it funny, or misunderstanding the intention, they obviously just
didn’t think about it. I mean, these things didn’t even occur to me would be somewhat annoying to deal
with until after I've dealt with them.

However, during the process, I found one woman to
be an especially difficult individual. I was first alerted to it when she sent
me an email reading, “I couldn’t answer to questions” [sic].

These were not personal. “What trends, styles, or
subjects would you like to see become popular in modern writing?” “What would
you like to see disappear?”

This annoyed me. I realized that the exasperated
and emotional tone I read her response in was mostly me, but I thought, “This
is your time to be interesting. What is so painful about saying, ‘I really wish
we could write in third-person omniscient’?” Make something up, lady!

Admittedly, she lost a little credibility with me,
coming off as somewhat dense. But I’m easily agitated, and I was doing it more
for her than for me. I’ve seen this before, writers seize up when embarrassed,
but usually it’s on the question of, “Tell us a little about your book.”

Her husband, who I had interviewed earlier, had
done the same thing, where he refused to answer two questions. They weren’t
that big of a deal, and I couldn’t comprehend their issue. What is so hard
about redirecting it? Ad-libbing?

Whenever anyone gets emotionally constipated at a
question, it defeats the purpose of the interview. A benefit to doing these
interviews is that I learn and consider what’s successful from both sides, and
I’ve realized that it is better to answer the question with a completely
nonrelated response than to shut down.

Part of this is because you want anyone doing an
article on you to be on your side. There are pretty common stories about
journalists intentionally warping quotes, putting them out of context, to
dramatize and boost sales. Sometimes your interviewer gets a lot out of making
you look bad, and irritating them is going to encourage that.

Of course, I don’t get anything out of that. I
mostly print the interview verbatim, with a few copyedits for grammar and
spelling and the like. Basic proofreading. But when it came to the questions in
which she refused to answer, instead of doing what I would normally had I not
been agitated—cut the questions all together as if they never existed—I marked
them as “redacted by author’s request.” I drew attention to the fact that she
refused to answer them, and made the mystery of what those questions were a
bigger deal. What personal thing did she absolutely refuse to answer?

Petty, I’m sure.

But it wasn’t just the abject horror of having an
opinion that caused me problems. When she sent it back to me, she said that it
was in big font because she had trouble seeing these days.

Well, understandable, but you couldn’t resize it
before returning it? Her strange formatting with extra spaces and other odd alterations surprisingly took a good twenty minutes to fix.

Her photograph was grainy and pixelated. Her bio
was not in third-person as I had requested. To top it all off, at one point in
the interview, she began to normalize scams, suggesting that agents selling
packages for ebook formatting and editing was just a sign of the time.

Keep in mind, buying an “editing and formatting
package” from a literary agent is like hiring a car salesman as a mechanic.
Agents do help authors with editing, they can often be former editors, but
editing is not actually why you’re hiring them. They are negotiators and
networkers, legal representatives for contracts, sales people in a way. They
are not publishers, they sell to publishers. They sell First English Language
rights to publishers. Having an editing and formatting department for
self-publishing can be promoting against their best interest, and would require
an entire new staff to have time (and skills) to do it. Agents are ridiculously
busy and they make their money off of selling books to publishers. If they’re
not doing well enough that they have to supplement with a new gimmick that has
little to do with their original job, then at best you have to question their
abilities. But more commonly, that’s a sign that they’re one of those companies
that make money off of scamming dreamers, not doing getting books published.

There was a point in which I considered sending
her an email saying, “I’ve decided against posting this.”

One of the reasons I recommend to any writer to
become a judge of a writing contest, start a literary journal, or even yes,
interview authors is how much you learn about being in the other person’s
shoes. You get a good idea of what not to do, why they want things done a
certain way, and even why rejection really isn’t personal.

In the past few weeks, I’ve begun to realize just
how important it is to not be unreasonably difficult, to make things easier for
people and never let insecurity stop communication. When working with someone,
it’s important to stand up for things that you don’t agree with, point out real
problems, and not just cater to their every whim, but on the little things,
always think about the success of the project first and foremost. When you want
something to happen, don’t fight the small stuff.

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Friday, October 13, 2017

If I’m overly interested in your age, it’s probably because I'm going to find a way to confirm my already existing bias.

2. No, you’re not
too old.

Unless you’re planning on dying within the next year, you
have enough time to write your book.

3. But I don’t like your writing.

I admire the confidence it took for you to give me your
work directly after telling me I’m not writing the “correct” way, however, if
you’re going to challenge me about our credentials, I’m taking you down. I don’t know why you didn’t see that
coming. Because I’m a mature professional? Ha.

4. No, I don’t
know if you’re going to be a successful writer.

How fast are you likely to get discouraged? Do I think
you can get published? Even traditionally published? Yes. If you stick at it. I
mean, let’s face it, some pretty terrible stuff has been produced, so it’s not
just about what I think of your writing.

And personally, I believe you can become talented even if
you’re not yet. If you stick with it.

Keep in mind I don’t know what your definitions of success is. Will you be a
bestseller? Statistically unlikely. Should that stop you? I don’t know. If you
find yourself in 20 years with a whole slew of books published, a decent fan
base, and yet still not making enough for it to be your day job, will you
regret writing those books?

I’m not going to tell you whether or not you’re going to
be a best seller because I don’t know, and it’s not really my business. It’s up
to you to decide how much work you’re willing to put in and how much you’ll
regret. I will say that, yeah, it’s unlikely you’ll be the next J.K. Rowling,
but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

5. Your idea is
boring and not that original. (But write it anyway.)

Oh, thank you. I’ve
always been lacking in ideas! I was just waiting
for someone to ask me to ghost write their brilliant vision while I wasted
my time imagining my own stories.

Your idea has been done before. No, I don’t want to write
it for you. Execution is more important than ideas in most circumstances, and
you’re asking me to do all the work. Of course I think my ideas are better. Why would I be a writer if I didn't think I had something of merit to say?

On that same note, you’re probably not going to find an
idea that hasn’t been done before,
and because execution is important, you can craft an idea into something unique
by contributing different elements.

Don’t bank on the originality of your idea; think about
the level of inspiration it gives you.

6. Shut up about
bad reviews.

Most of the complaints I hear are good things. That vague negative review that only said, “There were
swear words!” deters the people who will care, and not anyone who doesn’t. That
review that called you fat? Now readers are going to be on your side. No one
likes that kind of hostility. Spoilers? Sorry, but your tiny synopsis that
tried so hard to hide what actually happens in the book didn’t appeal to me. Those
spoilers actually told me something interesting. They didn’t finish your book?
How can they accurately judge it? Yeah, well, as a reader, I don’t want to pick
up a novel that’s going to bore me to tears halfway through—even if it does
have an epic ending. It may not help your sales, but it helps the readers, and
that’s who the reviews are supposed to be for.

Remember, negativity sells.

7. I’m not going
to tell you if you’re a good author.

I can tell you why your book does or does not work for
me. I can tell you why I get the vibe you do or don’t know what you’re doing. I
can tell you why I think your book isn’t going to have a satisfying ending, or
the way I think other people will react to it.

I can give you my personal experience and perception, but I can’t predict
everything. I can’t tell you if you’re a good author, or how much potential you
have in being a good author. Don’t put that responsibility on me.

8. I don’t believe
you actually like Hemingway.

Look, I’m willing to acknowledge that I might be wrong,
but let’s examine the facts: You put down your favorite authors as Joyce,
Fitzgerald, and Hemingway. What do these authors have in common…? Not writing
style. Not even subject matter really. Pretty much the time period and their
reputations. When I talk to you, you don’t really seem all that interested into
camping trips or grasshoppers or the sea. And you then you told me you liked
him because his prose wasn’t distracting. I’m not sure you’ve read him at all.

If you do like him, that’s your own choice and you
shouldn’t give two shits about my opinion. But you should know why I’m just
smiling and nodding.

9. You spelled
“writter” wrong.

In a recent descent against self-publishing, a woman went
on a rampage against these indie authors saying, without irony, anyone thinks
they can be a “writter” now. Another man vented against self-publishers
claiming that if their books were good enough, they would be picked up by a
traditional publisher like him. A traditional publisher, I came to find, who
doesn’t design book covers, market, or check for typos on the back cover.

My Grammar Nazism is hard to curb on a good day, but my
tongue is the most bloodied when people start casting stones.

10. How the hell
did you do that?

Shockingly, sometimes other people impress me.
There have been occasions where I see the amount of response they receive, have
a successful submission, or just do something genuinely stunning and I think, “How
on Earth…” Typically I try to support them in a subtle way, buying their book,
putting into their Kickstarter. If I know them well, I’ll ask them about their
experience, but if you’re just someone I watch from afar, I’ll just sit back
and wonder.

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Monday, October 9, 2017

Some time back, a man posted a strange opinion
piece that had the indie romance community up in arms. He suggested that using
a profile pic of a hot man and a pen name was catfishing, that he couldn’t
understand a reason to use a pen name outside of catfishing, and tricking women
into buying books from a “hot author” was wrong.

His conclusions were very different than my own
experience; being a woman who buys romance novels and makes a point to support
self-publishers, I have never looked at a profile picture of abs and thought
anything more than “Stock Photo.”

I have, as of yet, to see an “hot male author”
selling himself to hock romance stories, and even if I just missed something,
it also begged the question of why did it matter? Was there a woman who was
stupid enough to believe a photo of abs and the name Horace Nightingale was a
real person she was romantically connecting with? I mean, even if the writer
was a beautiful sculpture of the male physique and it did lead to most of his sales, what woman was being “emotionally”
toyed with in doing so?

Are there indie authors tricking people into thinking they’re some hot, wonderful man? I’m
sure someone has tried, but it doesn’t seem to be successful.

Nevertheless, I do think this gentleman got an excess
amount of flak for something he didn’t say. People twisted his words and
misinterpreted his point. He buckled down, however, announcing he was right,
everyone else was wrong, and he’ll never speak his opinion again on the
internet.

I followed him for a while on his blog, but his
negativity worsened over time until finally I dropped him. The day he lost all
credibility with me was the day he posted a piece on cults, discussing how he
did a massive amount of research on them, but ended with the question:

“What makes a cult a cult? I believe all religions
are cults.”

Massive amounts of research? You ended with the
first question everyone asks. There are answers, actually, official
answers, ones that don’t involve a faith even. Many cults are not religiously
based at all. What makes a cult is how it isolates you from anyone outside of
it, cuts you off from friends and family, and has a “misplaced admiration for a
person or thing” that cultivates malicious and/or self-harming practices.

Sure, the echo chamber of many religious groups is
strong—many religious groups put pressure on their young to hang out and marry
with believers—and what is malicious or self-harming is extremely up for
debate. But that’s the point; he added no personal insight into this hard,
commonly debated question, meaning that he was too unaware to know just how
unaware he was.

He didn’t know what he was talking about.

As an overthinker, I advocate a certain self-trust
in your common sense and gut instinct. There is too much information in this
world to try and “know” anything before you talk about it. You always have
something of value to say, and questioning that will hold you back.

But not doing your research, or assuming you’re an
expert on a subject is also a huge problem.

They say the more you know about something, the
more you realize you don’t know. So how do you know if your confidence is
founded in a genuine sense of self and where it’s just your naivety talking?

I criticize the belief you can’t edit your own work
or trust your own opinion on it. Certainly, you should seek out the reactions
of people other than yourself and always question your biases—because you will,
in fact, be biased both positively and negatively—but if you try to spend your
writing career handing your book to someone else to “evaluate” it, you’re going
to have an influx of contradicting information.

This is why I rarely give a first draft for
editing. For one thing, your partners will only tell you things you could see for
yourself—it’s difficult to dig deeper until you’ve cleaned up the top layer a
little. But, more importantly, the writer needs to understand what he’s
actually created a little better, know what he wants to have done. Book serve multitudes of purposes, everyone has
different tastes, and even when you do decide to make a change, you need to be
sure you understand why you did it a certain way in the first place and the
overall effect that change will have.

I myself had taken a seemingly fantastic
criticism, started to implement it only to be halfway through when I realized
why it didn’t actually make sense in practice.

It’s important to know your opinion on something
and to trust that opinion before you start incorporating others’. But how can
you trust your feelings? How can you know if you’re being biased? Stubborn?
Prideful? How do you know when it’s your gut talking or your naivety?

If you’re new to this business, you have something
valuable to say. Don’t keep your opinion to yourself just because it might be
naïve or inaccurate or cliché. You’ll never
be sure how everyone else sees your thoughts until you put them out there, even
when you are more experienced.

The trick is, however, to learn how to sound sure of yourself while not
sounding like an arrogant idiot. When dealing with subjective issues like
writing, sounding unassured will magically turn completely valid choices into
mistakes. Confidence—faking it until you make it—is key. Yet, you don’t want to
staunchly assert something to only have people laughing at your ignorance.

Knowing what you don’t know is complicated. The best
thing I’ve learned is that my opinions have merit in some vein, but sometimes
that correctness is a little more common than others. It’s not that your ideas are wrong,
but they are likely to be cliché and simplified.

Step outside yourself and recognize the way other
people see you. If you are a man discussing how women buy books and women are
disagreeing, examine why you think women buy books that way. Have you seen it
first hand? Anecdotal evidence means a lot in writing, and it’s far more
interesting to use specifics in your discussions. Does it fit into some
appealing ideology of why your books aren’t selling? Maybe you’re hobbling
yourself due to misinformation.

Assume that your initial reactions are typical.
The questions, the conclusions, the belief system is going to evolve over time
and your knee-jerk stance is going to follow suit with people who have the same
information as you. The best thing you can do for yourself is be personal,
don’t generalize, and don’t attack when expressing your opinion. Learn how to
be open, inclusive, and really listen to those speaking around you. But most
importantly, remember that listening means active listening: Talk. Engage.
Question.

The blog in particular was interesting and opinionated, different than what other people are saying. The problem wasn't the belief itself, but that he never questioned if maybe, just maybe, he was operating in a blind spot.

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